Russian Superfinal with lots of fighting chess

12/22/2007 – This is what people want to see: 2700+ players in a crisis, bouncing back dramatically, as Svidler and Morozevich did. Just 50% of the games in the Russian Championship so far were drawn, White won 28% and Black 22%. In the women's section it was even more dramatic: just 23% drawn games, with 44% white and 33% black wins. One lady, Natalija Pogonina, has a perfect 3.0/3.0 score.

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Russian Superfinal – report after round three

After a shocking defeat in round one Peter Svidler made a comeback in the second
round. He did seem to be in a spot of trouble for a while, but then overran
his opponent with a tactical kingside attack.

Farrukh Amonatov had beaten Timofeev in the first round. In the second he stumbled
over Alexander Grischuk, one of the three 2700+ players in this tournament.
In round three the two shell-shocked players, Amonatov and Svidler, drew their
game in 25 moves.

Black is already in big trouble, but with the move 49...Nb5?
he jumps out of the frying pan straight into the fire: 50.Bxb5 axb5
51.a6. And how, pray, do you intend to stop this pawn? You don't: 51...Rh1
52.Kb2 Rh2+ 53.Ka3 e4 54.fxe4 Rh1 55.Nb3 1-0.

The favourite working position of Alexander Grischuk (position after 40...Nf6)

Alexander Morozevich had spoiled a brilliant game in round one to a draw. In
round two with the white pieces he got into trouble early in the game, and then
pinned his hopes on a mating pawn promotion attack that failed. That left him
with 0.5/2.0. But Morozevich is not the top seed in this event for nothing:
in round three he comprehensivly outplayed the leader Evgeny Tomashevsky with
the black pieces to bounce back in this very strong event.

Dmitry Jakovenko on a roller coaster ride in Moscow

Speaking about bouncing back: Dmitry Jakovenko was the lucky player who escaped
in with a draw in his first-round game against Morozevich. In round two he lost
traumatically to Konstantin Sakaev, but in round three made up for everything
with a fine win against Arty Timofeev.

See also

12/30/2017 – The "King Salman World Blitz & Rapid Championships 2017" in Riyadh from Decemer 26th to 30th. At the half way point of the Blitz Championship, the defending champ Sergey Karjakin leads with 9 / 11. Maxime Vachier-Lagrave is a half point back followed by Peter Svidler and a trio of Chinese: Wang, Ding and Yu on 8 / 11. In the Women's Pia Cramling has a full point lead with 9½ / 11. Watch live with Rounds 11 to 22 from 12:00 Noon CET (6:00 AM EST) on Saturday with commentary by E. Miroshnichenko & WGM K. Tsatsalashvili.

See also

12/6/2017 – Imagine this: you tell a computer system how the pieces move — nothing more. Then you tell it to learn to play the game. And a day later — yes, just 24 hours — it has figured it out to the level that beats the strongest programs in the world convincingly! DeepMind, the company that recently created the strongest Go program in the world, turned its attention to chess, and came up with this spectacular result.

Video

On this 60 mins video we are going to concentrate on a simple, very solid idea in the main line Scandinavian, which even Magnus Carlsen has used to win games. Black focusses on making his life easy in the opening and forces White to work very hard to get advantage – but it is doubtful if White can get an advantage. Club players are always on the lookout for effective, time-saving solutions and here we have just that. Accompany FIDE Senior Trainer and IM Andrew Martin on this 60 mins video. You can learn a new opening system in 60 mins and start to play it with confidence on the very same day!